Yes, more please.

I love Amy Poehler and I could not write a bad review of her new book, “Yes, please!” if you held a gun to my head. This review will be highly biased, but since no sane person could not love and adore Poehler, I have a feeling that this won’t really matter much anyways.

In this book she is deeply honest. While the book covers her childhood, her time at SNL and her stint at Parks and Recreation it might follow a pretty standard formula, but Amy makes it her own. I suspect it is what Seth Meyers confirms for us in his guest chapter: everybody wants to be Amy’s friend because she is the sweetest, warmest, funniest person. And she is so beautiful.

I laughed and cried in this book and I let Amy do that to me because she is legit; In a chapter titled “sorrysorrysorry” she takles the way that (some) women say sorry too much – and it’s fine, it’s a good point, but then she tells the story of the one time where she did not apologize, how it haunted her for years that she’d made fun of a disabled child on SNL. It’s a dark story, but it makes you laugh even harder afterwards, we have all done horrible things, things we are not proud of and it has been difficult to be yourself through that horrible thing. But Amy apologised, Amy is forgiven and so can we.

She doesn’t discuss her divorce, because it is too personal and too sad. She talks of Arnett in the highest praise. By simply stating how much more she and Arnett were in love before their first baby, she made me burst into tears. I was really invested in those two and it really just breaks my heart. But of course Amy is right, divorces are personal and painful and shitty. Better to speak of respect for ones ex-partner and not letting either part of the marriage come out looking like an horrible people. People probably look like asshole during a divorce. I love Amy and Will too much for that. (SH! Go away. AMY AND WILL ARE MY FRIENDS!). BUt I won’t pretend my heart isn’t broken when she says “I’d met Will and knew I wanted to marry him,” she talks about him with so much love. It is an exemplary way to handle a break up.

Refreshingly she doesn’t include a chapter on feminism, instead she lets it permeate the entire book. You can tell she lives by feminism and respect for people and it’s just so lovely. Talking about women on women toughness (Amy says cut it out) and delegates a rather uncomfortable story about a man crossing her boundaries; where a no is not taken as the end of a conversation but rather as a starting point for negotiation. Most women have been there and Amy tells it perfectly. So what if it’s just a story of summer jobs and late night SNL gigs and being tired (ALL the time) and first and second and third loves. It’s not a book set out to change the world, but it did make me laugh and paint pictures from some one elses life for me. And that’s all I want in a book. Also. Amy.